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Deciphering the alchemy of flour, yeast, and salt with some of Knoxville's bakers.

by Adrienne Martini

Passion is contagious.

It zips around a room like a current, electrifying everything with which it has contact. Passion builds bridges and climbs mountains and moves masses. Find a person who loves doing something, who has a passion for a task—like collecting, like painting, like physics—and you have found a person who can power the world on excitement alone.

Work reflects passion, like a mirror reflects beauty. The product, whether it be a portrait or an equation, takes on its own life, glowing ever so slightly from within because of the quality of energy that went into it. Don't believe it? Compare the yards of a plant-lover and a plant-hater. Or a runner who loves running and a runner who wants to lose ten pounds. If you love what you're doing, you put a tiny piece of yourself into the product. You just can't help it.

Passion is also something you can taste—a cup of soup made by your mom always tastes differently than one poured out of a can. Chefs who love to nourish people turn out much different products than chefs who are merely putting in time. And a passionate baker moves simple flour, sugar, yeast, and butter into a divine realm that is more than just a dozen cookies or a loaf of bread.

Some of those inspired, passionate bakers work their magic right here in Knoxville, and their hardest work takes place behind the scenes at their respective bakeries. Jim Gay of Old Mill Bread Company and David Patterson of Rita's Bakery are two such creators. Taking a bite of Gay's Honey Whole Wheat bread is like a journey into gustatory bliss and dresses up even the most mundane sandwich. Patterson's pecan sticky buns, thumbprint cookies, or strawberry cream cheese croissants are like the food equivalent of every wonderful childhood memory you've ever had. These are the kinds of bakers who pour their love of dough into their products and cause their passion to rub off on anyone who experiences it. And maybe, just maybe, if you see how each kitchen operates you can apply it to your own baking endeavors.

"I never intended it to be a healthy bread," says Gay, from the spotlessly clean work room of his Cedar Bluff store. "We just wanted to make the best bread we could." For him, that meant making a loaf that contained no dough enhancers, no preservatives, and no added oils or fats. "We make less money, but we make a better bread."

In some ways, it's amazing that such a sanitized environment could foster such a flavorful, satisfying product. You'd expect a bakery to be paneled in a warm wood and coated in a thin layer of flour. But the Old Mill almost gleams, full of stainless steel and white Formica, almost like a high-tech bread lab—which shouldn't be a surprise, given that Gay started his adult life as a chemist.

It's not a hard logical leap from there to bread baker—both involve mixing ingredients in order to form a product. But a baker's results may be more scrumptious than a beaker full of sulfuric acid. Gay used to bake bread at home and remembers his grandmother always baking bread on wash day (because the humidity helped the second rise) when he was a boy. "She did it by scratch and feel," he recollects.

As we tour the bakery, starting with the mill room where the whole wheat from Montana, which looks and feels like little brown grains of rice, is ground into a flour, Gay discusses how he got into this rising field. "I love baking," he confesses, and his blue eyes light up like Boomsday.

Gay and his family, which includes wife Janet and his now 13-year-old daughter, were living in Ft. Wayne, Ind., where he worked in a chemistry lab. For him, it was unfulfilling. "I wanted an 'atta boy,'" he says, and pats on the back were lacking in this field. Given his love for the baking process, which involves strict adherence to recipes—much like chemistry's strict reliance on formulas—he and Janet decided to go into the bakery business.

But there was one big hitch; they couldn't find anyone in the area who wanted to make the kind of whole foods breads that they did. And so they ended up serving out an intensive internship with a baker in Salt Lake City, after they sent each other loaves of bread in order to discern each other's style. "I picked his," Gay says. "He picked mine. Perfect match."

After their learning process, the family had to decide where to locate their new business. They spent a summer picking cities, looking at four criteria: positive economic growth, a low crime rate, a location near a university, and a population that had high income and population levels. Eventually, their choices narrowed to Rochester, N.Y., Madison, Wis., which were rejected because they are too cold, Greenville, S.C., which seemed too new to the Gays, and Knoxville. "Knoxville," says Gay, "was the only place we liked the people." Plus, he adds, the beauty and the climate made it a natural fit.

Despite Gay's own warmth and charm, he is remarkably tight-lipped about sharing any of his baking secrets, almost like one would imagine Oak Ridge to be during the Cold War. The Knoxville baking biz, apparently, is pretty cut-throat, and if others learned how exactly Gay makes his inspired loaves, he could be forced out by knock-off products.

But what can be said is that Gay has honed his proprietary formula using the skills he learned in his previous career. "Chemistry made me wonder what would happen with experimenting, asking why not," he says. His curiosity has lead to the creation of 26 different types of bread, of which they sell "many, many hundreds of loaves per day." All of which are assembled, proofed, and baked in this tidy store out in West Knoxville.

"I don't have anything poetic or Biblical to say," Gay mentions when asked about his philosophies about creating sustenance out of flour, yeast, and water. But when forced, he admits that "Bread is like life. It's hard work." The work, however, pays off when his customers call him by name. "That's my 'atta boy.'"

Rita's Bakery, just off of Tazewell Pike in Old North Knoxville, is about as far removed from the sterility of Old Mill Bread Company as a place could be. That's not to say that Rita's is dirty—it truly isn't—but is to say that you feel that real creation is taking place here. This is a bakery that doesn't rely on strict formulas and adherence to chemistry. Rita's is the place where baking is still done the way your grandmother did it—by sight and feel and smell.

And chief baker David Patterson looks like the hip guy who sat next to you in high school band, 20 years full of life experiences later. He wears Birkenstocks, a faded pink apron, and shorts. His long gray-brown hair is pulled into a loose, Willie Nelson-ish braid. At first, baking "was just a job to start with," he says as he turns out a dozen loaves of moist, spicy pumpkin bread. "But, like anything else, the better you are at it the more interested you are in it."

Patterson must be pretty good at it, given that Rita's churns out desserts for over a dozen restaurants, including Ye Olde Steakhouse and Naples, and the storefront has become a local legend. One whiff of the delectable smells wafting from the kitchen will tell you why.

Patterson's passion is a family business. He is flanked in the tiny, cluttered back-room kitchen of Rita's by his sister Monica, who is decorating a jungle-scene birthday cake; Matthew Rongo, who answers the phones, works the counter, and is the "Prince of Petit Fours"; and Sandy Collis, who is scooping out and baking a variety of cookies. Another brother, Greg, is the delivery driver; another sister does the more complicated cakes, and the bakery itself is named for the Pattersons' mother Rita, who comes in to help and advise on occasion. As the team works—it looks like a well-choreographed modern dance—WNCW plays softly in the background and the plaintive voice of Lucinda Williams just seems to fit the controlled chaos.

During a normal week, Patterson works roughly 60 hours, which goes up to 80 or 100 during the Christmas holidays. "That's when it gets really crazy in here," he points out. But it's hard to picture such a laid-back atmosphere becoming frenzied. In fact, Patterson looks perfectly calm and rested, despite the fact that he has been baking since 4:30 this morning.

"It's hard to get something to turn out well if you're unhappy," he says, as he assembles two key lime chess pies, mixing the batter in a stainless steel bowl that is big enough to bathe a toddler. "It's a Zen kind of thing. You have to be the dough. It's about your mutual condition."

Patterson's baking philosophy stems from his experiences in learning how sugar, flour, butter, and eggs behave. He taught himself most of what he knows, picking up tidbits through books, other bakers, and even the Food Channel. His degree is actually in sociology, not really a baking or business related field. He professes that "college only teaches you how to find things out," which is interesting given that Patterson's father was a professor at UT. You can't help but get the impression that this is a family of folks who love to learn.

"You get stuff," he says, "wherever you can find it. Having the space and the tools is half the battle. And even your worst effort is probably edible. I just wish I had more time to experiment, but I can't take the chance and the time. This is a business and it's difficult to get something to break into the rotation."

When asked what he loves to make from his current repertoire, Patterson looks like you've asked him to name his favorite child. He thinks, and stirs a brownie batter that looks like a bowl of molten chocolate. "My favorite is something that comes out right. I really take great satisfaction in that. It's like competing with yourself. Some days you're behind. And some days you're on. It just flows."

You can tell that both Patterson and Gay's true passion is the baking itself, finding that flow. They each have a similar happy skip as they move from one item to the next like a kid in a candy shop, almost beaming into each filled pan before it goes into the oven. You can taste this in each product as it comes out, an unquantifiable note of flavor that warms your mouth and your tummy.